Eggless Ferrero Rocher Tart

Last month I skipped the challenge due to my mom's sudden demise. This month I didn't want to miss the challenge. Priya Srinivasan of Enveetu Kitchen suggested this tart recipe from Trissalious. This tart is inspired by the famous Ferrero Rocher. My daughter loves Ferrero Rocher and I was sure that she would love this tart. This tart has so many elemnts combined together. The tart base is a chocolate based crust. The filling is hazelnut mousse. The topping is caramelized hazelnut and chocolate combined together and the whole assembly is topped with a caramelized hazelnut. As hazelnut is not available at Madurai, I substituted it with almonds. The hazelnut mousse is actually made with nutella spread and so I didn't have any problems with that. The mousse had eggs in it and I just substituted it with whipped cream and gelatin was replaced by china grass. I halved the recipe and got 12 delicious tarts. As I was doing so many works together, I didn't note down the cup measurements. I just weighed all the ingredients as given in the original recpie and used it.

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Zebra Cake (Eggless)

Zebra cake is a combination of vanilla and chocolate cakes and the pattern is got by pouring the batters in a pan alternately. I have been trying to get the perfect zebra pattern but I am very sad that I have not yet succeeded. Actually I wanted more of the vanilla batter and less of the chocolate batter so that the lines are clean and neat. So I divided the batter into 3 parts, one for the chocolate batter and 2 for the vanilla batter. Even then I ended up with this not so good looking zebra cake. Though I missed the pattern, the taste was awesome and my daughter fell for this cake. She was so happy that mom has finally made it. This is the final post for the Blogging Marathon # 32, under cooking with alphabets and bakes theme. Finally I am so happy that I have completed this marathon successfully and I need to thank Srivalli for this wonderful idea. The cake batter is my usual condensed milk vanilla cake batter. Once when I prepared this cake the chocolate was looking very dull. I couldn't understand why it was happening. And one day I tried a chocolate cake with instant coffee powder added to it and the cake came out so dark and chocolatey. And this time I added a teaspoon of Nescafe instant coffee powder and look at the colour of the chocolate portion. It is nice and dark and very very chocolatey..

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Yam Roast

During my school days my mom prepares this a lot and we were all a great fan of this simple side dish. When ever we had a simple lunch, just rasam and poriyal, mom made this to accompany rasam rice and it would be a satisfying meal. The only work in this side dish is to slice yam into tiny cubes. But nowadays with a knife and a board, that also has become very easy. And it has to be served straight from the pan otherwise the cubes will become soft. So usually mom starts cooking this only 15 minutes prior to serving time. You need to use a lot of oil to get a nice crispy roast and sometimes I bake it in oven too for a guilt free version. But this is what mom used to make and I am so happy to recreate it in my kitchen. I served it along with paruppu kootu, rasam and curd. What else do we need??? For the Blogging Marathon A-Z Series, today is the day for alphabet Y and this is what came to my mind for Y paired with regional dishes.

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X-Cookies/ Sicilian Cucidati

Yesterday it was so hectic. Apart from doing all the house works, I prepared two elaborate recipes which needed so much of preparations. I will talk about the other recipe later. Coming to this X Cookies, it is a Sicilian cookie, also known as Cucidati. It has a cookie dough and a tangy sweet filling made of dried figs. I bought all the ingredients but kept on postponing until the last day. Nowadays I am procrastinating a lot. Need to change that. The cookie dough is so buttery and is prepared like a pie crust with cold butter so that the cookie turns out buttery and flaky.  The filling has figs and apart from that it has lots of candied orange peel, chocolate, apricots and raisins. As I didn't have orange peel and raisins I added lots of apricots instead of the other two. The filling itself was very tasty and beware, you could finish it off before you roll out the cookie. So keep it away from kiddos until you finish baking. They turned out so delicious, though the shaping was quite a job. I am posting this for the alphabet X for Blogging Marathon #32.

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Wattakka Kalu Pol Maluwa

The very first time I heard of this curry was while watching Peter Kuruvita's Srilanka which airs on Fox Traveller. I usually watch all the cookery shows and in one episode, I saw this recipe. Seeing that the name starts with W, I at once noted it down for the Blogging Marathon A-Z theme. Wattakka is the yellow pumpkin and this is a curry with pumpkin and is coconut based. As Srilankan curry powder is not available here, I searched for the recipe and prepared the spice powder at home. It was very tasty and I served it with multigrain dosa for breakfast one day. I also served it for lunch with rice and both the combinations were good. The Srilankan curry powder was very flavourful and it gave a nice aroma to the dish.

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